Character Creation and Development
Naima Jeffery was one of the original twenty-three characters invented by the creators of EastEnders, Tony Holland and Julia Smith. Naima and her husband were the first Asian characters to appear in the soap. Black and Asian characters were two ethnic minorities that had previously been under-represented in British soap before EastEnders aired. Holland and Smith knew that for the soap to succeed there needed to be a varied group of characters, so that several different sections of the audience had someone to identify with. Additionally, if the programme was to be realistic, it had to reflect the cross-section of society that actually existed in the real location. For these reasons, different sexes, ages, classes, religions and races were all included in the original character line-up. Both Holland and Smith had been at the forefront of the move towards 'integrated casting' in television and had encountered an array of ethnic diversities in the process. Even though the ethnic minority groups were deemed the hardest to research, Holland and Smith called upon their contacts to relay information about their origins and lifestyles and were then able to portray Walford's most recent immigrants more realistically. Naima was originally intended to be named Najma; named after one of Tony Holland's Bengali friends, the wife of Saeed (who was also the character name of Naima's on-screen husband). Holland had attended their arranged marriage, and he thought the notion of an arranged marriage, particularly an unhappy one, would be an interesting and informative topic to tackle in the soap. Because of the similarities with his real life friends, the name Najma was altered to Naima, in order to protect her identity.
Naima's original character outline as written by Smith and Holland appeared in an abridged form in their book, EastEnders: The Inside Story (In this passage, Naima will be referred to as Najma).
- "He is quarter English, three-quarters Bengali and she is wholly Bengali. Their parents were originally from Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan, and they are Muslims and cousins...Najma had an easier childhood...She became aware that she couldn't accept the traditional role of an Indian wife, but she wasn't enough of a rebel to leave home and adopt a totally different lifestyle...Saeed's mother's father became seriously ill. It was decided that Saeed's parents should return home to India, and a hasty marriage was arranged between Najma and Saeed so the young couple could then run the food store...They are in a confusing situation, accepting the customs of their parents, yet - because of having been born, brought up and educated in this country - feeling that they're slightly English...Neither of them is particularly docile, having lived through the jungle of the school playground, and the cut and thrust of working-class urban life...Saeed and Najma will make a big effort to mix, and most of the time, fail." (page 58)
Holland and Smith had a lot of trouble casting the role of Naima, as barely any Muslim women responded to their advertisement, and those who did were all unsuitable. Shreela Ghosh, a non-Muslim Indian actress of Bengali ethnicity, was a late arrival. She was a comparatively inexperienced actor, but she was the right age, looked right and she also liked what the programme was trying to do with a young Asian couple. She was subsequently cast in the role.
Naima runs the corner shop, and her early storylines depict the problems of her arranged marriage and portray a character caught between two cultures. Despite being labelled as a stereotypical portrayal of Asian people today, at the time in the 80s such issues had not been widely covered, particularly on mainstream television.
The character lasted in the show for over two years, depicting an independent woman battling against her families wishes and striving to succeed even after her first marriage ended in divorce. The character eventually remarries and returns to her native Bangladesh in November 1987.
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